Wow looks like the public gave in. No anti-protesters or nothing. Thats really sad.

Blocking DNS and websites at the request of a multi-billion dollar industry is wrong and sick. Big brother bollywood edition.

But yeah further inspection leads one to find this is from Indias "bollywood" film industry. Perhaps no one cared because they'd rather watch real movies......... Just sayin!

Jokes aside this is really sad to see this passed. Not because people can't get pirated knock off cheezy movies but because a company is being allowed to censor the INTERNET in India and who knows what they will block! and if they will be held accountable.

I'm not sure about the state of the web in India but from what I've herd they are pretty reserved and protective so they block a bunch of stuff for no good reason anyway.

In India, there is no way one could reasonably think that filesharing of copyrighted materials has a useful legal purpose. I *guarantee* that my fellow countrymen are infringing copyright in every way imaginable. We were doing it with Cassettes, VHS, DVDs, and now we're doing it with internet streaming.

I see this is as good news. Because all the "illegal" copes had crappy quality, and I only want good stuff.

I think you misunderstand that flyer. It isn't "No music because music is immoral." like the Taliban might, it is "No music because the music is copyrighted and the party isn't paying royalties for it like they are supposed to." like the RIAA here in the good 'ol USA.

That's because our leadership changes roughly every 4-8 years while in most civilized nations, the length is a bit longer, depending. It's like we have bi-polar disorder on a political level. Too bad the rest of you can't ignore us.

But site blocking on the Internet, though it sounds so seductively easy, comes with its own set of problems. Blocking by DNS can be circumvented simply by entering a site's actual IP address instead of its name. Blocking by IP address can be bypassed by moving a site to a new server that carries a new IP address. URL blocking has little effect when an existing site simply changes its name.

And all of the above can be hopped over via a simple addon... our addon Just google "Thepiratebay dancing addon"

That's because our leadership changes roughly every 4-8 years while in most civilized nations, the length is a bit longer, depending. It's like we have bi-polar disorder on a political level. Too bad the rest of you can't ignore us.

Same sentiments DownUnda !! It's certainly an error to generalise/assume homogeneity in 'democracies'.

Piracy will probably go back to it's roots then. Guys in alleys with a spread of watches inside their coats.

It’s quite mind boggling that it took the Indian Music Industry (IMI) more than 10 years ( might be even more ) to finally wake up and realize that there are hundreds of infringing websites providing ‘free mp3’ of Bollywood (catering to hindi speaking listeners ) and several other regional languages and making money without paying a dime to the copyright holders.

With my experience of staying in India for a while and the general feedback I receive from my friends over there, a website like songs.pk (operating from neighboring Pakistan ) has been around for almost 8+ years now and to many people it’s almost a ‘legal music website’ as these people still cannot differentiate between an infringing and a legal website. Part of the problem is for the bigger industry ( Bollywood ) and smaller and local ones ( also in the business of making movies and producing music ) were too late in the digital revolution and did not provide the customers with a solid legal alternative. There are literally hundreds of websites ( again mostly hosted in Pakistan ) that kept cropping up over the years, digitizing millions of songs and providing them for free for people all over the world while the IMI was still sleeping. The situation was never a straight forward one like having an Itunes or Amazon mp3 like service. When legal alternatives started, the website layout and the customer experience was still amateurish and prices ridiculous for each song.

If there are alternatives available now, these have only cropped up in the last 2-3 years. But to completely eradicate these pirate websites, Indian entertainment industry needs to figure out good solid alternatives and market them to print and TV audiences so that they are aware of such services. Otherwise for the average layman, who are still struggling to understand how the whole internet thing works beyond IE and Google..they can’t even differentiate a pirate website from a legal alternative, as some of these pirate websites are surprisingly ‘user friendly’ and the legal web alternatives still looks like they are being built in the 90’s.

Being Indian, I myself never pirate music - Flyte.com works for me 90% of the time, otherwise I rip CDs - but seriously, this is really giving me some serious Big Brother vibes.

The rupee is really small compared to the dollar, and consequently everything is cheaper here (talking about stuff like food or clothes) and so nobody wants to pay $0.99 for a track when they're used to buying Indian CDs for $2-3 or downloading them free from the internet.

But this is the wrong way to go. Blocking these websites is simple to bypass, as you've said, and then this will go on in circles forever before people realize market-based pricing has to be done.

In India, there is no way one could reasonably think that filesharing of copyrighted materials has a useful legal purpose. I *guarantee* that my fellow countrymen are infringing copyright in every way imaginable. We were doing it with Cassettes, VHS, DVDs, and now we're doing it with internet streaming.

I see this is as good news. Because all the "illegal" copes had crappy quality, and I only want good stuff.

You just need to learn how to use the Internet. I have a couple of hundreds of original DVDs at home and most of them are worse than what I get of torrent sites. I even managed to found some original DVDs with quality worse than used up VHS tape.Mostly, if I try to play good quality DVDs I am presented with the message "This DVD is not allowed to play in this region."

This type of laws will only lower the quality of the media we consume because there will be no alternative to crappy local DVD distributor. Kill the competition (even if it is illegal) and you will kill the quality.

Before Steam and GOG I pirated a lot of games. Today, I don't have a single peace of software on my PC that is not legal. Give me good quality for reasonable price and I won't pirate.

To add to the 'slippery slope' theory the government of India wants to censor sites or postings critical of the politicians. Also no 'obscene' pictures of gods and godesses, you know like the thousand year old images carved in stone on the sides of temples. DOH !